I think it is easier to ignore a situation when it is really far away such as if you are in North Carolina and there is some civil unrest going on 5 hours away in Washington D.C. or over in Los Angeles. Now this rioting nonsense has made it's way to Greenville, North Carolina; which is about 15 minutes from my house.
Although considerably smaller in scale, a mob took to the streets initially attacking the police station and causing very little damage before moving on. It is estimated that there are only a few hundred people involved and for the most part property damage has been at a minimum.
The group was identified and police in riot gear were immediately dispatched, which kind of says that Greenville might be handling this a little bit better than other cities such as Richmond, Virginia where by the time they mobilized a law enforcement group much of the damage had already been done.
There was only one police car that was damaged and one memorial where minor damage took place and it was a rather unsuccessful attempt at defacing it anyway. The guy in the picture above should be a little worried because they will likely be able to identify him with this and the other cctv footage that almost certainly exists in a police parking lot
I want to explain to you why this situation could have a very different ending than it did in other liberal cities such as Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, etc. It's the second entry on the Constitution of the United States and the fact that North Carolina has quite a lot of supporters of it, including those in the state government.
If this crowd were to move towards private industry, they would likely see a very different response to their aggression than the groups encountered in the big cities where ownership of guns is somewhat limited. While the area I live in is quite rural in comparison to Greenville which has a population of around 100,000, everyone in my neighborhood is armed, and even though I think one of my neighbors is an asshole and I presume he thinks the same about me, I would still help him defend his property if it came down to that.
The police have a very important job in Greenville and other small to medium sized cities in North Carolina, because if they can not maintain order, the armed communities that exist inside of it definitely will. I can promise you this, nobody will be looting my house or setting my car on fire. I have an AR-15 with 10 30-round magazines at the ready (as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition,) a Mossberg 12-gauge with speed-loader adapter, several rifles including a very powerful .308, as well as multiple semi-automatic handgun sidearms.
My community has already gotten together and we are self patrolling the neighborhood including sentries working in shifts at the 2 entrances to our area. All of the gun owners in my area are legal gun-owners and we are trained. Many of us are ex-military.
I can promise you, it would be a terrible mistake for any of these rioters to attempt any harm to our families or property. Let's hope it doesn't come to that because if we draw on someone, we are shooting to kill and are prepared to do so in order to protect our community.